BLOOD, BREAD AND BEAUTY

From Lautreamont onwards it has become increasingly difficult to write, not because we lack ideas and experiences to articulate -- but due to Western society becoming so fragmented that it is no longer possible to piece together what was traditionally considered `good' prose. That is, writing which is unified by a single idea or body of ideas, where each sentence follows logically from the preceding one -- and where every paragraph and chapter flows smoothly into the next. Today, thoughts seem to break before they are fully formed, they turn back on themselves, contradict each other and make it impossible to write in a style which appears harmonious.
The great problem with twentieth-century art is the constant demand for something new and original. As a consequence, while everything appears to be in a state of flux, nothing actually changes. Instead, the same half-baked ideas constantly re-appear under a succession of different names. It took thousands of years to develop perspective and yet today people demand radical innovations every week. The result is they get exactly what they deserve -- insults.

Neoism is opposed to Western Philosophy because it repudiates the rhetoric of logical argument. Logic is the road that leads to no-where, or at the very best madness. Neoism has never claimed to resolve anything, Neoism simply is. It asserts no more than is obvious and nothing is more obvious than Neoism. Neoism is the ultimate form of Western Philosophy because it is not a philosophy at all, it is an illegible note that Karen Eliot allowed to fall from her breast pocket prior to a performance at the West Hampstead Starlight Club in 1978. It is no more than a sneeze, or rather hollow laughter. Neoism is undefeatable, self-refuting and incomprehensible.

Every act of superstition confirms and reinforces a belief in something above and beyond wo/man. The whole point of revolution is to smash the fragmentary world of capital and lynch the bosses who quite deliberately promote an ideology of individualism in order to prevent the development of class consciousness. Because religion is a support, a crutch, a recognition that wo/man can't live fully as an isolated individual, it contains within it the seeds of a mass revolutionary consciousness.
Today, the dead weight of history oppresses us with more efficiency than the most reactionary politicians of the past could imagine in their dreams of bureaucratic perfection. We stagger and suffocate under the burden of thousands of years of accumulated debris. Debris that stifles anything but the most aggressive of creative sparks. And today, that spark threatens to burn us alive in a prison of our own making. Today, the urge to smash the venerable museums has reached a point from which it threatens to become more burdensome than any previous history.

The only movement to work consistently towards the death of history since the disbanding of the Situationist International has been the Global Neoist Network. Only Neoism carries within it the revolutionary potential for the realisation of our complete humanity. Since 1979, Neoism has been defending the revolutionary gains made by the Situationists and Fluxus. The Neoists are the only group to have brought about the conjunction of nihilism and historical consciousness -- the two elements essential for the destruction of the old order, the order of history.

Neoism stands at the end of history, the present. Despite the uncertainty such a position inevitably entails, Neoism draws strength from its sense of history, its sense of the reality of the past -- and of the importance of Lautreamont, the Situationists and Fluxus. We have studied these people carefully and discovered that there is nothing to be learnt from them. Those who look to the past walk blindly into the future.

Neoism has always been more concerned with propagating confusion than serving itself up in consumable chunks. A Neoist is somebody who believes in the value of carrying an umbrella on a rainy day, or rather in stealing someone else's umbrella if it starts to rain. S/he is someone who, as a matter of conviction, refuses to work. Who would rather survive on someone else's money than the fruits of their own labour. Someone who seeks gratification in the present rather than security in the future. Someone who is quite genuinely surprised when their relatives express anger at their turning up at five in the morning demanding to be lent a considerable sum of money. Someone who, utterly convinced of their own genius, believes that not only are they owed a living -- but that their very existence entitles them to be kept in the lap of luxury at somebody else's expense. Above all, a Neoist is someone who believes that art, rather than being the creation of genius, is merely an exercise in public relations. A dull sham, not even worth debunking in public.

First published in Smile 7, London 1985.

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